David Cameron’s new-found support for Chelsea reflects a blatant
vote-winning tactic.

Looking back at the picture that emerged from the summit of leaders of the world’s most developed economies this weekend, historians will wonder what it all signifies. In the middle of the photograph there is the US president smiling benignly. Alongside him, the German chancellor seems rather perplexed. Further to his left, the newly elected French president looks bored, as if he would rather be at home rearranging his sock drawer. In contrast, to the president’s right is a bloke in shirt sleeves, a clutch of middle-aged spread about his midriff, flinging his arms skywards in a bellow of triumph. This, it turns out, is the British Prime Minister.

What can it mean? Has David Cameron just heard that the UK economy has grown by 0.25 per cent more than predicted? Is it the news that the Greeks are to leave the euro that has so excited him? Or has rumour reached his ears that Ed Miliband’s lead in the opinion polls has been reduced to single figures?

Apparently not. This group of potentates is watching the final of the European Cup, a football match in which a German team has been bettered by an English one. Or as English a team as you can describe one that’s owned by a Russian and chaired by an American, and for which the decisive strikes were delivered by an Ivorian brought up in France.

Why the triumphalism? Why the excitement? More to the point, why the need to invite the cameras to record the moment? It wasn’t as if history was being made. This was not the first time an English team had beaten a German one to be crowned European Champions. It happened in 1982 when Aston Villa beat Bayern Munich – though there are no pictures of Margaret Thatcher, prime minister at the time, taking a break from a summit hosted by President Reagan to watch coverage of the game. There are no snaps of her punching the air with ill-concealed joy when Peter Withe scored the winning goal. No photographs exist of a patronising hug of condolence with Helmut Kohl, the West German Chancellor, afterwards.

But then 30 years ago prime ministers, even if their poll ratings were in vertiginous decline, did not associate themselves with football (or if they did, it was merely to disparage it). And 30 years ago even wannabe PMs were agnostic to the game’s charms. There is no record, for instance, of a

15-year-old David Cameron bunking off from Eton to attend Villa’s triumph in Rotterdam – even though his uncle, Sir William Dugdale, was the club’s chairman at the time.

Now, however, any passing ball-shaped bandwagon is leapt upon by struggling politicians. Cameron was not alone. His Chancellor, George Osborne, battered by dismal economic news, went one better than the PM. He was actually there in Munich, grinning maniacally in all the pictures of Chelsea lifting the cup. Yesterday, he was claiming lifelong affiliation to the club. This despite the fact that in its lengthy list of politicians who support the Blues – including luminaries such as David Mellor, John Major and Peter Hain – Chelsea makes no mention of Osborne.

But such is the born-again nature of the political fan. Faith is a quickly seized concept. As in America, where no presidential hopeful can run for office without a record of regular church attendance, so in Britain even those who have about as much natural affinity with the game as the French president has, are obliged to feign passionate interest.

It was Tony Blair who began the trend, at the suggestion of his press spokesman, Alastair Campbell. Blair came up with some apparent twaddle about his lifetime support of Newcastle United that was so riddled with inaccuracies it was subsequently used to suggest he might have lost connection with reality.

But Campbell’s idea was a sound one. It was to create a link between a politician and the electorate to demonstrate that he was only human, one of the lads, just like the rest of us. So never mind that Chelsea’s support does not extend much beyond a few Sloanes, arriviste City types and Suggs from Madness, Cameron and Osborne are desperate for any bit of good news to cling to. Like Jacques Chirac, who ensured that when France won the World Cup in 1998 his was the first interview on national television, so Cameron and Osborne wanted to hitch their flag to a successful pole.

Which makes you suspect this may not be the last time we see our prime minister rigorously displaying his armpits in celebration this summer. Come the Olympics, we can expect to see him leaping with well-practised joy for the cameras every time a British gold medal is won. Suddenly we will discover that the man from Number 10 has all along held a passion for Taekwondo, the triathlon and Greco-Roman wrestling.